


The Wants of a Dead Man

by OraRiposo



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BBC America, Feels, Gen, John Watson - Freeform, Johnlocked - Freeform, Sherlock - Freeform, Sherlock Holmes - Freeform, Sherlocked, sherlock/john
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-22
Updated: 2013-06-22
Packaged: 2017-12-15 18:26:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/852664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OraRiposo/pseuds/OraRiposo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone. This is a story about Sherlock's final  moments before that final leap. Before his final task.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wants of a Dead Man

It didn't seem so long ago that they sat together in a cab, chatting amiably about unimportant things. It didn't seem so long ago that they were in their flat together doing aimless things to pass the times between cases. To make the time more bearable. It didn't seem so long ago that they were sprinting through London, chasing taxis and whispering drug lords, following the wet shoe-prints of a boy dead twenty years, condemning and rescuing damsels in distress, investigating spectral canines, grasping at straws of the untouchable straw man. It didn't seem so long ago that life was normal. 

Yet here he stood, inches away from death with damnation ahead and behind, with the only being he loved in the world standing on the ground below, begging him not to jump. The only one who had ever shown anything more than tolerance toward him. The man who fascinated him and drove him to a new level of thinking. This was the man he loved. The man he yearned to be around, the man he wouldn't mind sharing a flat with for a very long time. 

He could hear the tiny voice in the cell phone he held away from his ear, he could hear the echo of John's voice, shouting up at him from the ground. Useless words...they wouldn't help him. Nothing could...no one could. 

Sherlock looked down at the man he'd spent the last hours of his life handcuffed to, the man he'd asked to trust him completely, the man he'd woken every morning for countless mornings to answer questions he could have answered himself or participate in some experiment or another. 

Looking down at John, seeing the realization of what was about to happen blossom in the man's eyes, Sherlock broke. Tears stung his eyes, and he dropped the phone, hearing the plastic crack against the concrete of the roof on which he stood. The consultant blinked his eyes rapidly and looked up at the sky. "This is my note," he whispered to himself. The archaic words he'd told John. "Goodbye, John...." The last words he would utter in this lifetime. 

He stepped off the edge of the roof. No hesitating, no wondering if there was another way out, no shedding useless tears, he didn't just step. He jumped. He jumped because to save Lastrade, to save Molly, to save John, he would bathe in gasoline and jump into a pit of fire. He jumped, plummeted, wind whistling in his ears, ground coming closer and closer.

"Sherlock!"

Silence.

A flurry of movement drew his scattered attention. He should have felt pain...shouldn't have felt anything at all, but the fact that he could feel something should have left pain as an only option. He could see everything happening all at once through his wide-stretched eyes. An ambulance had been called, people were swarming him. Was that blood? Yes, definitely blood? But whose? Must be his...that would be a right royal mess to clean up. 

Focus! Who did he want to remember on his way to wherever or whatever came next?

John.

He tried to move his head but nothing responded. Start smaller. He tried to blink. Nothing. Tried to move his eyes. Still nothing. Paralyzed? Doubtless. Dying? Certainly. If he could have, he would have cried. He wanted to see John one last time, wanted to look at him and not see disbelief and fear in his eyes. He wanted everything to be normal again.   
But what use are the wants of a dead man?


End file.
